Afghan Refugees Returning Despite Warnings

December 15, 2001|By Marc Kaufman The Washington Post

Despite warnings from the United Nations that their country is not ready to receive them, thousands of refugees have begun returning to their homes in Afghanistan from camps in neighboring Pakistan and Iran.

Relief agencies say the numbers are still manageable -- about 17,500 this week -- but they are increasingly worried that they could grow, as happened in 1999 in Kosovo. When the war ended there, 630,000 refugees returned in one chaotic month despite U.N. cautions to remain in camps.

"Given the precariousness in terms of food, shelter and basic survival of the Afghans who never left, we would be very concerned about a massive return now," said John Fredriksson, coordinator for external affairs for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Washington. "It could destabilize an already unstable situation."

Still, the UNHCR on Friday called the growing return a "positive sign" and said it was a "vote of confidence among the Afghans living abroad in the recent turn of events." But the agency also cautioned Afghans "not to rush back" and warned countries in the region not to pressure refugees to return.

According to the UNHCR, more than 7,000 Afghans returned from Iran last week -- the largest number crossing that western border for any week this year. Another 7,000 Afghans crossed from southern Pakistan to the Kandahar area, and 3,000 through the Khyber Pass to Jalalabad and Kabul.

Although these numbers represent a considerable jump from previous weeks, they remain small given the enormous number of Afghan refugees -- as many as 4 million people who have been out of the country for as long as 20 years of war, drought and misrule. They constitute the largest collection of refugees in the world, and make up one-fifth to one-quarter of the Afghan population.

An estimated 160,000 refugees had left Afghanistan since September, particularly after the American military campaign began against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, and relief officials said many of those returning are likely from that group. The UNHCR reported that many returnees were more affluent Afghans, and some might be going back to celebrate Eid, the end of Ramadan, with their families.

But officials said the returns may be a signal that Afghans are beginning to think it is safe to go home and that many more will soon follow. Officials had expected the large migration back to occur for the spring planting season, but not now, at the onset of winter.

The UNHCR and other relief agencies have been "quite careful to say they are not encouraging large-scale repatriation at the moment and are saying the country is not in any state to absorb large numbers of people," said Oliver Ulich of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs. "But that doesn't mean they won't decide to go back now."

An additional 1 million Afghans are displaced within the country, having fled to rural areas from cities such as Herat and Kabul during the American bombing campaign, and officials said thousands of them were also returning to their homes.

According to Fredriksson, U.N. officials were meeting with refugee leaders in Pakistani and Iranian camps to discuss conditions inside Afghanistan and were telling them of the widespread shortages of food and shelter. He said that "scouts" were going back to see if family farms and fields were intact and if villages and neighborhoods are secure and that their reports would determine whether the return picked up quickly.

"We hope people will take into account the difficulties in Afghanistan," he said. "But when you're dealing with the complexity of human behavior, unpredictable and undesirable things can happen."

Afghan officials also are worried that the interim government that is scheduled to take power on Dec. 22 could be destabilized by a sudden influx of refugees. "The new government simply doesn't have the ability and resources to deal with hundreds of thousands of returning people," said Daoud Yaqub, a spokesman for Mohammad Zaher Shah, the former king of Afghanistan, who has spoken about the subject with the incoming leader, Hamid Karzai. "If the refugees come back quickly and large-scale, the administration could quickly collapse."